


The War

by BlazingQuill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Friendship, Gen, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft Wizardry, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Past Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, friendship during wartime, implied remus lupin/sirius black - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazingQuill/pseuds/BlazingQuill
Summary: James never had any brothers, except that he had three of them. He loved and he loved and he loved. He loved his friends and their tragedies. He loved laughing and he loved flying and he loved getting a spell right. He loved a friend showing up soaking wet at his door in the middle of a night with a suitcase and he loved a redhead whose eyes burned as she smiled or shouted. James loved the school, the teachers, the mischief, the war.--Five students graduate from Hogwarts in the middle of a war.





	The War

“War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.”

–Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Vor Game", 1990

* * *

Lily Evans had been introduced into the wizarding world almost eight years ago.

True to the nature of the innocence of children she found a world of magic and adventure, of new possibilities and new being and new wonder and new dreams. When Lily Evans went to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry she began a new life, and suddenly the illusive flight of possibility was not a thing of the future or the past but the here and now.

She found possibility intoxicating, as so many do, and she learned everything she could as fast as she was able, and if, at eleven years old, she noticed that there were people disappearing and unexplained murders and a series of natural disasters which seemed to have a little too much disaster and much too little natural cause, than she, like so many others, discounted it as a bad circumstance and went on living her life.

Lily Evans was not, however, someone who took up willful ignorance as a hobby. It did not take her long to notice the way eyes sometimes followed her down the hall, the way some people refused to talk to her, the way conversation died when she talked excitedly about learning that she was a witch. Mockeries seemed to spring to the lips of some, and suddenly the war that had been a constant in the background of her image of her new life was not so far away anymore.

Lily cared deeply about justice. She stopped preparing for possibilities that may or may not come true. She started preparing to fight.

For this young girl, the tragic loss of innocence was _how_ she came into her own. A coming of age story gone wrong. 

Lily found her allies where she had never expected and lost her friends in ways long seen coming, and by the time of her graduation from Hogwarts she had even discovered love from the one place she had never thought to look.

Lily Evans knew the wizarding world better than many others who would easily dismiss her part in it. She knew that the wizarding world held possibility, but understood that its magic was not superior to the magic of everyday life. She knew that wonder could be satisfied and dreams could come true, and she knew this had nothing to do with the wand in her hand. And she knew that the war that was said to have begun about the year she entered Hogwarts had been going on far longer than anyone would confess, just with different pieces on the playing field. 

This is Lily Evans’ story: she exits the school that had been her sanctuary and her prison, her trap and her home. As she steps off the boats—the last glimpse of Hogwarts so similar to the first, over this shining lake—she stands on the banks of Hogsmeade, the only all wizarding village in Great Britain. This is Lily Evans’ story: she looks at her friends and she looks at her enemies, and she smiles.

* * *

Remus Lupin had been fighting the war for most of his life. It was in the little things, the way his mother told him she loved him and his father held his hand. The way they stayed away from society, lived in the country, despite his father’s ministry job and his mother’s muggle one. The way sometimes they moved towns and the way children would talk to him for one month, two, three, four, and then he would never see them again. It was in the way his parents weren’t sure if he was going to Hogwarts and the way he was sure he was not.

The war was in bigger things too. Vile words passed the mouths of strangers when Remus was taken into his father’s office one day, and his father never took Remus again. He had to go into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures once a year to register with a witch who was a little too loud and a little too skittish and little too exaggeratedly kind. His parents didn’t want him interacting with other children at all, despite the fact that they loved him. It was the way he was told he had to be controlled, regulated. The way he was told he was a creature. It was the way that once a month he turned into the wolf, the monster people were afraid of when they saw him.

When he was little his family had a padded closet for the transformations. When he was older they moved deeper into nowhere and spelled an area of the forest near them so no one would come near. Werewolves scratched and cut up themselves when they weren’t able to reach anything else. Remus had many scars.

Once upon a time there was a man who would one day become Remus Lupin’s father. This man was kind, and he was filled with a desire to protect. He loved a muggle and embraced the dissention that fact caused. And, as so many kind and virtuous men and women do, he held prejudices. These prejudices were the insidious, unconscious kinds, the ones people do not realize they hold. They were the ones people can have all of their lives and which they aren’t quite sure how they had attained.

This man, Remus’ father, spit words at a murderer once. He yelled things at a monster who he knew had killed two children. He was so sure, so positive. Soulless, he said, and evil. One who deserves nothing but death. He said this and he stood by his words. He was the first shout of an echo of thousands who would damn and describe his own son.

Once upon a time, too, was a child. To be clear, this child was not Remus Lupin, but he could have been, he _could have been_. This child didn’t have a father and mother who loved him and told him he wasn’t monster. In fact he had no mother and father, and many people who told him he was very much a monster indeed. Too much pain and hate and grief and blame and vengeance twists a person. This child became a monster when he was told it was the best way, the only way to survive. He murdered for his pack and stayed alive. No wolf made this man a monster, the human did that to himself.

The father had yelled at the child, and the monster had bitten the son.

But in this life, in this war that Remus was fighting, the unexpected, unprecedented happened. Remus Lupin was allowed to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

There was a man with a beard and half-moon spectacles who knew what it meant to be a monster. He had loved a monster once. Had been one, for a given quality of monstrosity. He believed now in forgiveness, because the entire world had granted it to him. He believed in love not because of his love for a murderer but because of his love for his family. Yes, this man knew what it meant to be a monster intimately, and fought against it every day with every breath. He went to Remus because he knew that the wizarding world looked for monsters in all the wrong places.

He looked at Remus and saw a boy.

The school held an illusion of peace, but Remus knew it was a war. It was simple, really, making the leap. Because Remus went to school and was told not to tell anyone who he was. The same story, told thousands of times. Told again.

And yet, and yet.

Prejudice is so rampant in the world that people forget a world without it, or maybe never had one to remember. It is held up by the very people who hate it through unconscious assumptions. It is held up by people who practice it through certain knowledge. (They are so _certain_ they are right.) But prejudice is not the end, it never has been. There were three boys, three brilliant boys, who maybe had the prejudice, maybe practiced it, but fought so hard against it that they won, for that is what happens when you fight.

Remus Lupin found friends, he found comrades who knew him for who he was, all of who he was, and sacrificed everything for him. He found love too. When a person gives someone else everything they have, and are received in turn, then there is nothing lost.

This is Remus Lupin’s story: he exits the school that had been his ignorance and his enlightenment, his confinement and his freedom. As he exits the great hall for the last time—the sky is a beautiful sketch, turbulent in shades of grey and gold—he has three boys who love him at his back. This is Remus Lupin’s story: he has been fighting a war for as long as he can remember and he’s scared, he’s terrified, and he doesn’t know what to do; but only because he thinks he’s winning.

* * *

Peter Pettigrew had been so preoccupied trying to be brave, for his mother and for his pride and for his fear, that when the war started he almost didn’t notice, except for he feared a little more and had a little less courage and a little less pride. But he had to be brave, he _had _to, because his father hadn’t even looked at him before he abandoned them, and his mother wasn’t brave at all, and it is easier to cower than to fight.

Peter knew: he cowered much more than he fought. He supposed that maybe he _was _brave, in his way, going day after day, never stopping. 

People talked about bullies like they were some type of ugly foliage, like they were an annoyance, sure, but not quite the boogie-men a victim made them out to be. Maybe it was a little like that. They were real, solid, persons in and of themselves, with their own stories and their own pain, and people shouldn’t loose sight of that—on the other side of taunts is a person, not lesser because they treat their victims as such.

But that isn’t quite right either, because they are boogie-men. They _are_. Peter has nightmares when he shouldn’t, when the war hasn’t touched him and his pureblood, neutral mother. He thinks of himself as lesser, he can’t help it, because when your told something day after day there is a part of yourself that always believes it. He has no scars, but he has bruises. He looks in the mirror and he sees a cow or a walrus or a whale because that is what he has been told. Peter was in contact with other children before he went to Hogwarts, but he never had any friends.

Peter seemed to outsiders to have no reason to complain in the carefree life of youth. People tend to dismiss the nightmares of children, as if anyone under a certain age can’t be as cruel as children’s testimonies say. Many children are dismissed, are blocked from getting help in even the rare circumstances where they try to, because adults don’t believe them.

Peter seemed to outsiders to have no reasons to complain in a spoiled, privileged upbringing. In this way he got caught in the trap that many others do. Privilege is fine, its great to not starve and to have some things asked for and to be able to afford an education and a shelter, of course it is, because all children should have those things, because those things are _rights_. But children are egalitarian. If they perceive difference—whatever a person’s circumstances—they can be unkind.

Peter was plump. He had big teeth and a flat nose and a round face. He was quiet in crowds and he laughed at some jokes adults said that the other children didn’t understand. Peter was by himself a lot. He didn’t go out of his way to make friends. He was different.

When Peter went to Hogwarts there was another quiet boy. A boy with scars who didn’t quite fit into crowds and laughed at some jokes adults said that the other children didn’t understand. There was another boy who was by himself a lot. Who didn’t go out of his way go make friends. Who was different. Peter, when he went to Hogwarts, did something he never expected. He befriended a wolf.

There was a boy at Hogwarts who had lost a little brother when he was given a red and gold common room. He ruffled Peter’s hair and made him smile and distracted anyone who might get a little too close too fast, like he had practice at drawing attention to himself to help spare another. He sat up with Peter some nights. They talked sometimes. Sometimes they didn’t.

There was a boy at Hogwarts who fought bullies like he was fighting a war. He stood in front of Peter when people made cruel jokes, and Peter felt satisfaction in the way he made those people run. The way he made them regret. This boy would smile and laugh like it was nothing and he would act a fool when he wasn’t one and Peter thought, ‘This boy was never bullied. This boy is strong.’

These three boys were fighting a war, one that Peter almost didn’t notice, except that he feared a little more and had a little less courage and a little less pride. But Peter though he might be brave enough to join them, now. These boys who fought bullies. These boys who called him ‘friend.’

There were _four_ Marauders.

When Peter went to Hogwarts a hat told him he was brave, and Peter thought that maybe he was, going day after day, never stopping.

This is Peter Pettrigrew’s story: he exits the school that had been his foundation and his flight, his solidification and his downfall. As he walks through the school as a student for the last time—these swooping walls stood as tall as if he were still eleven—he feels a hand on his shoulder and a ruffle in his hair. This is Peter Pettigrew’s story: he doesn’t slouch when he strides through the halls, but he looks back.

* * *

Sirius Black, as a boy, had been told that this wasn’t a war, it was a revolution. In his house there thrummed a nervous excitement, as if time wasn’t going quite quickly enough to satisfy. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and family friends all visited and whispered, laid out like the entire family tree with the ugly portraits that Sirius shuddered to think might one day portray him. (And yet, there was always that stomach dropping dread that he wouldn’t be portrayed at all, blasted away.)

_Toujours Pur_.

The revolution was a mantra, a chant, a call for chaos and order and power and greatness. His mother chanted the call, burst with it, and lashed outward at all who doubted her.

But Sirius Black questioned everything:

“Why don’t some pictures move?”

“Why do you dislike it when they don’t?”

“What does that word mean?”

“They don’t have magic?”

“How do they survive?”

“But they must be really good at living, right, if they survived even without magic?”

Sirius Black questioned and he questioned and he questioned.

There are some things a child should never be told, and one of those things is to not ask questions.

Sirius Black was told many things. One of which was to shut the fuck up before he was hit. One of which was that his little brother loved him. One of which was that he was a piece of crap, and a fucking idiot, and _different_. One of which was to stop crying, and one of which was to stop laughing.

One of which was to not ask questions.

Yet Sirius Black, in spite of it all kept being curious, and kept asking questions, and kept trying to make his brother laugh. There are some things that a family teaches a person, and yet some things are deeper; they rest inside every person, and light up every soul. Sirius Black was raised on hate. He was forced to swallow it and smile and murmur the mantras his mother screamed. But Sirius Black, though he swallowed the cruelty, never meant to be vicious. He didn’t know how to be good, when all he had for examples of goodness was a single decent cousin and an uncle who seemed to be exasperated much of the time, but he tried, he _tried_, and sometimes, for moments, he succeeded.

Sirius Black’s family was trying to shield him from the one thing that can never be kept at bay: ideas. To Sirius Black, ideas came as naturally as breathing.

When Sirius went to Hogwarts it was like he was set free. When he said everything that came into his head people laughed. When he did well, people praised his efforts. When he didn’t work as hard as he should in his classes, he still impressed his teachers every single time. He didn’t stop crying and he didn’t stop laughing and he didn’t stop asking questions. And he was different. _Different_. It was glorious.

It didn’t matter if he lost his brother’s love, he told himself; he had gained friendships and a love in turn.

Sometimes he forgot he wasn’t cruel. Sometimes a boy would sneer over a hooked nose malicious things at Sirius’ best friends, his only friends, his saviors and his hopes and his conscience. Sirius would forget, and he would end up hurting these friends he gained. 

Sirius didn’t always know how to be a kind person. He was a wolf, savage and feral, and he didn’t always know when to stop. But he knew a different wolf who folded his socks and looked at him with shining eyes, and he knew a boy who would sing in the shower, and he knew that when he was dripping from the cold and the rain (and the tears) he would always have friends to dry him off, take him inside, and put up with him for as long as he needed to stay. 

Being a whole person is hard, at times, and it isn’t something that is easy to fix. Hope and joy die out, until only cracks and shells remain, going through the motions without having a framework for how to escape, one way or another. But things can and do get better with time. Sirius Black pretended to be a whole person for so many years that he forgot he wasn’t one. His friends knew he was a whole person the entire time. Jests are sometimes made about stories where friendship saves the world, saves the life, but Sirius knew never to discount these stories, for he was inside of one.

This is Sirius Black’s story: he exits the school that had been his refuge and his escape, his humpty-dumpty wall and the hospital that had put him back together again. As he looks out at the docks under the school—the boats they had sailed in as first years still bobbed in the water—he laughed as he almost slipped on the rocks. This is Sirius Black’s story: he knows he’s entering a war and he’s glad of it, he’s excited, because he can choose, because he’s _free_.

* * *

James Potter had been a part of wizarding society his entire life, but it was only for the first ten years of his life that wizarding society had been at peace. The whispers had started before the fighting, of a power of fear or greatness or hope or death. The perspectives twisted together, so that many did not know which of these powers it was. Some said all of them. Some glared.

But the fighting started when James was ten. James remembered, because his dad, thirty-something and old now, to James’ young eyes, had put his hands on his son’s shoulders to explain, and then went out with his department, the Aurors, to fight. He didn’t die. James’ didn’t really understand how people could say that so happily when he had _lost_. 

James’ war was with him when he entered Hogwarts, and the facts of the war were that the bullies were the enemy. This James knew, from his father’s thoughtless whispers before his mother quieted him. Therefore, James set up a system. Scorn earned a joke, whispers of mudblood, or other names, earned a trick, dirty tricks earned much much more, and James was convinced that this was the war.

This was the war. Bullies were the enemy. Vindication and revenge was interspersed with laughter and joy and daring and a few close friends. James Potter would make sure he _won_.

The Marauders: they were on the front lines every day, and they didn’t even realize that they had become the enemy until much too late.

James never had any brothers, except that he had three of them. He loved and he loved and he loved. He loved his friends and their tragedies. He loved laughing and he loved flying and he loved getting a spell right. He loved a friend showing up soaking wet at his door in the middle of a night with a suitcase and he loved a redhead whose eyes burned as she smiled or shouted. James loved the school, the teachers, the mischief, the war.

James never knew what magic was, because when something is normal it cannot be glorious and cannot burn brightly enough to be magical, but sometimes a small boy would smile at him with big teeth, a flat nose, and a round face and say ‘friends,’ and sometimes a boy with too many scars would hug him and whisper ‘thanks James,’ and sometimes he would wake up to the smell of burnt cooking in the kitchen of his family’s house and a black haired survivor would look back at him over a mountain of pancakes, smile, and say nothing at all. James never knew what magic was, but a fiery girl with eyes that burned as she smiled or shouted would sometimes take his hand.

This is James Potter’s story: he exits the school that had been his warzone and his playground, his salvation and his doom. As he drifts over the lake—the last glimpse of Hogwarts so similar to the first, over a shining surface of water—he sits with his three brothers. This is James Potter’s story: he flings his arm around the person next to him, and looks up at the sky.

* * *

Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had been at war before.

A hero, they called him. The Man Who Saved Us All. Maybe he was, and maybe he was a villain too. People get so wrapped up in labels that they do not notice, or do not care, that a person is never just one thing. Albus Dumbledore was a villain because he helped the man who tried to destroy the wizarding world. He was a hero, because he saved it.

Albus Dumbledore had misunderstood love and hate once. He saw a boy who was brilliant and burning with a fire of righteousness. He saw this boy who wanted to fix things, change things whatever the cost, and for two months of his life (just two, only two) he helped him, loved him.

For the greater good.

It was muggles who had driven Albus’ sister insane, forced his father into Azkaban, chained his mother to their home, and broken his brother’s heart. He thought that he might hate them. He thought, maybe it would be better, maybe it would be, if a child was never tortured for being different.

Albus Dumbledore spent two months in this little village: love and hate, a situation misunderstood, hypocrisy and brilliance and vile thoughts and the will to create change.

Albus Dumbledore, eighteen and still a child, still a _boy_, learned his lesson at too high a price, and carried the weight with him for the rest of his life.

What creates wisdom?

Albus Dumbledore made mistakes. People had coined him as arrogant because of his intelligence and sorrowful because of his family history and they did this when he was still a child. They told him he was wise for his age, and he swallowed it up brimming with pride, conceit. But years and years and years later, after pain and sorrow and loss and a war, he sat in an office presiding over the students he knew would be the future. He had fought for equal rights for the majority of his life, for longer and harder than he fought against them, and he had tried to convince his students, one by one, not to make the same mistakes he did. In even the darkest of times, he had turned on a light. He did not forget to live.

What fosters joy?

Dumbledore was often named far too serious a child. As an adult he always had a twinkle in his eye. Joy is not bursts of happiness, moments of satisfaction. It is looking at the world and knowing that in this place you have made a difference. Dumbledore found the uses of dragon’s blood, he worked in alchemy, he defeated a monstrous enemy, and he was put on a chocolate frog card. But Dumbledore was always a teacher, from the very beginning.

What brings hope?

Dumbledore had a phoenix in his office, who sang and was reborn. Music is magical in the same way stories are: they teach the lessons of life without requiring the mistakes that come with them. Dumbledore always loved music, and the wellspring of goodness from which it sprung. Stories happen inside your head, but they are real, they are _real_.

What is the meaning of love?

Dumbledore knew, now. Dumbledore knew that love was not always passion and fire, but rather built on years of late nights and deep conversations and long friendships. People are people, in the end, no matter their surface differences, their differing backgrounds. Love is a deep aching regret for a sister lost and a brother alienated. Love is thousands of students who grew up under his care, thinking and feeling and learning. Love is sitting on a wall next to a cat, and love is fighting evil with friends at your side. Love is the source of wisdom and the source of joy and the source of hope and the source of friendship. It is the most important thing in the world.

What is the price of wisdom?

He chanted a mantra once, for the greater good, and later it felt like bile in his throat. But maybe sometimes there _is_ a greater good, when you are within a war you cannot win. Battle plans are drawn out, hidden aces and a triple-crosses, spies and manipulation, pawns on a battlefield. One life for ten, fifty lives for five-hundred, one life for five thousand. How do you know if you could have made another choice? The Order of the Phoenix was an underground resistance with guerrilla tactics and a leader who ate himself up trying to save the lives he couldn’t. Was it worth it?

There are so many questions, in this vast world, and Dumbledore didn’t fancy himself to have the answers to all of them, but he thought he knew more now than he did before.

It was love and hope that had seen him through, and love and hope would do so again. It is not always enough to love someone to save them, but that was never the point of love was it? Love created. It produced joy and hope. It told stories. Love kept dreams alive and fostered friendship. Love changed prejudices and love bore forgiveness. (Everyone had forgiven Dumbledore, these brilliant and strong children of his, yet Dumbledore never managed to forgive himself.)

There were these wonderful kids. These loving, hopeful, fighting, strong _children_.

He knew they had a right to fight for what they believed. He knew that they were far too young to understand what they had lost.

And he knew now, he knew, that it would be better if a child, any child—wizard or muggle, muggleborn or half-blood or pureblood or squib, werewolf or bullied or abused or cared for or rich or poor or hated or loved—it would be better if a child was never tortured for being different.

How much atonement must a person do until their transgressions are erased?

Perhaps transgressions never are, never fully erased, but perhaps they are forgiven. There was a man, wise now at too high a price, who gave everyone second chances.

This is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore’s story: he enters the school where he still learns and still wonders, where he is still awestruck and still sad. As he watches this class of students graduate in the middle of a war—he can see the boats are empty on the far side of the water when he looks out the window of his office—he holds his knowledge of them, their pain and happiness, close to his heart. This is Albus Dumbledore’s story: he turns away from the window, back into the school, and begins preparing for another year.

* * *

There were others, of course there were—Severus Snape and Marlene Palmer, Mary Macdonald and Frank Longbottom and Alice Robins—with stories of their own. All about to enter a world torn apart by a war that seemed it would never end. All holding with them some amalgam of happiness and hope.

* * *

“War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.”

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago, this was supposed to be the start of an epic story. I had over one hundred chapters planned out about the course of the war from this graduation to just after James' and Lily's death. Someday that dream might happen, but in the meantime this stands alone as a character study and an analysis into the situations each of these kids were in when they left their school behind. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, as I love most of these characters very much, and the one I do not (Peter Pettigrew) I did my best to try to understand. 
> 
> Signing off,  
BlazingQuill


End file.
